Laying eggs while roosting at night

[lissalischicks]

So some of my girls seem to be laying in the middle of the night. When we go to clean their hen house in the morning we see eggs on the sand below where they were roosting all night. The majority are soft but there are regular eggs. Do you guys think it might be just the heat or something else. Why are they laying ar night? It has been really hot where I am .... high 90s to over 100. The 2 girls I am suspecting will lay regular eggs in between the soft eggs I find in the morning. The rest of the girls lay eggs like regular so far.


I do have extra calcium out and I see the girls eating from it. They are on grower feed right now but only because we have chicks in with the big girls (they are 8 weeks today). I have enough nesting boxes for them but they have their favorites. So there is always a yelling match.

Ideas?

 

[lissalischicks]

Forgot to add....
The other weird thing is... the girls that layed the eggs at night .... in the morning/afternoon will walk to the nesting box and sit it like they are going to lay an egg!

 

[PachecoPeeps]

So some of my girls seem to be laying in the middle of the night. When we go to clean their hen house in the morning we see eggs on the sand below where they were roosting all night. The majority are soft but there are regular eggs. Do you guys think it might be just the heat or something else. Why are they laying ar night? It has been really hot where I am .... high 90s to over 100. The 2 girls I am suspecting will lay regular eggs in between the soft eggs I find in the morning. The rest of the girls lay eggs like regular so far.


I do have extra calcium out and I see the girls eating from it. They are on grower feed right now but only because we have chicks in with the big girls (they are 8 weeks today). I have enough nesting boxes for them but they have their favorites. So there is always a yelling match.

Ideas?

If they are new to laying it is very common for it to take a couple weeks of not longer for them to work out the egg laying kinks.

Because the eggs are soft they just think they are pooping and in reality it’s a soft egg. Just be sure to keep the oyster shells out and maybe even sprinkle it around. I had a hard time with soft eggs with my new pullets this year and has to teach them to eat the oyster shell by sprinkling it around.

 

[lissalischicks]

Sorry forgot to mention they are 2 and 3 years old

 

[lissalischicks]

Any other ideas? Found another egg under the roost but this one was hard not soft. But it cracked from the fall....

 

[snow5164]

I’m wondering if your nesting boxes are too hot? I’ve had this every now and then but not that much ... I’d place a few fake eggs in the boxes just to remind them what they’re for. If you have curtains maybe pin one side open so they aren’t so hot in there... the heat really affects the hens

 

[aart]

I’m wondering if your nesting boxes are too hot?

That was my first thought also.
...and check nests for pests too.

 

[Hend6475]

This is happening in my flock also but it's late October. So, not the heat.

 

[RustyBucketFarmGirl]

So some of my girls seem to be laying in the middle of the night. When we go to clean their hen house in the morning we see eggs on the sand below where they were roosting all night. The majority are soft but there are regular eggs. Do you guys think it might be just the heat or something else. Why are they laying ar night? It has been really hot where I am .... high 90s to over 100. The 2 girls I am suspecting will lay regular eggs in between the soft eggs I find in the morning. The rest of the girls lay eggs like regular so far.


I do have extra calcium out and I see the girls eating from it. They are on grower feed right now but only because we have chicks in with the big girls (they are 8 weeks today). I have enough nesting boxes for them but they have their favorites. So there is always a yelling match.

Ideas?

This happened when mine first started laying. i had mine on an all flock with calcium on the side. That was the feed before they started laying. I didn’t make the switch to a layer feed until a couple started laying. What i found was they just weren’t taking the oyster shell and started laying rubber eggs all over the place. I also found that while they had this problem that they were still laying some perfectly normal eggs. And they could lay both in the same day.

I am unsure how to solve this problem for your ladies since you have chicks running around. I have always had the same age in my chicken keeping.

Good luck!